Re: Rare phonemes (was Re: Using word generators)

> Philip Newton wrote:
> > Phonemically, I'd be inclined to analyse it as /lU.tS@n/.
>
> That would imply that [tS] is a unit phoneme, call it /c-caron/. But doesn't
> Germ. /S/ usually derive from *-sk- or *-sj-? that would imply that [tS] is
> (or originally was) a cluster, thus the syllable division would be
> [lUt.S@n].

You may be right.
I also don't know what the correct hyphenation would be. (Hyphenation
in German usually follows morphological rules -- which means that to
hyphenate everything correctly, one needs to know about the morphology
of languages such as Greek and Latin! The average German would be
unlikely to hyphenate Lin-ole-um "correctly", but would probably
produce something like Li-no-le-um instead.)

> Is the vowel in such cases short/lax (implying /-VCC(V)-/ or can
> it be long/tense /-VC(V)-/?

It can be long, though I have difficulty coming up with examples.
The first that came to my mind is "sutsche" with /u:/, which is
northern German dialect, most probably from Plattdeutsch, but then I
thought of "latschen" (to walk in a certain way) and "Latschen"
(colloquial term for shoes) which have /a:/. I think "Grätsche" also
has /E:/ rather than /E/. Oh, and "Bratsche" (viola) has /a:/ as well,
though that's almost certainly a loanword (it looks suspiciously like
a Romance word for "arm" to me).
Most other examples I can think of have short vowels, though (e.g.
lutschen, Putsch, rutschen, patschen, futsch, Matsch).